[Excitement is optional.]

There’s nothing we encourage more than interaction (other than puzzle-solving, which we encourage a great deal), so, please, sign-in and make your presence felt. We can talk about the weather, or how the weather used to be.

[Let’s Just Call It ‘Smell Ya Later’.]

After what seems like a blissful eternity, our own Shaylah Kloska, friend to man and animal, has decided to step down from her post as Chaperone’s most talented and well-loved member.

It’s with a heavy, yet happy heart that we tell her here, in the public forum of the internet, that we love her with the entirety of our being. From heel to head. Stem to stern. Root Chakra to whatever the topmost Chakra is. Shaylah, you’ve been an inspiration and we are going to miss you desperately.

Please join all of us in saying ‘so long, farewell, etc…’ to Shaylah (and the current incarnation of Chaperone) at The Beat Kitchen on January 28th, which is also, coincidentally, Shaylah’s birthday. Presents are encouraged. As is cake.

Tickets are available at The Beat Kitchen’s website, and all of your friends are invited. Even the one with the eyepatch.

[We Row and we row and we row and we tire.]

It’s hard work. It’s time and heart and cash and moments of brief, fleeting beauty. It’s connection. It’s unspeakable bonds. It’s wonderment even in the worse times. It’s compulsion. It’s bruises and blisters and black-eyes and the same songs 1000 times over. It’s more and less than you imagine it being.

We are so thankful to you. We are thankful beyond words. People say that they’re driven to do it. That it’s a part of them that grows beneath the ribs, until it’s pressing against them so hard they fear they’ll burst. They need to let it out. It’s the way ‘I love you’ sits like cotton in your mouth when you’re lying next to someone warm and thrilling and familiar. Something safe and risky all at once. And you say it. Lay it at the alter. But, without a lover’s ear, or heart, or hands, it wouldn’t mean anything. ‘I love you’ would be motionless. It’s like that with us. We are driven and alive with direction. But we are dependent.

So, thank you. For following us. For reflecting our songs back to us. For stirring within us. And, on our best nights, for letting us stir within you. We’ll, hopefully, be given a chance to see you all in person this Saturday, when we do, the smile in our eyes are for you. Are for us.

[In Which Love Will Keep Us Together.]

The autumn is upon us, which means it’s time to pull on your sweaters, turn your iPods to Yo La Tengo, and join Chaperone at the Double Door on September 17th.

That’s right, on Saturday, we will be playing with noted (yet not convicted) ladykillers Archie Powell and the Exports, as well as the dazzling Singing in the Avery, and the exemplary Bright Light Social Hour. The show starts at eight, and may be your last chance to catch Archie and the Gang for a while. So, put on a sensible scarf and join us at the Double Door.

Now, if I may, I’d like to share a little bit of information about that last bullet. We, in Chaperone, have created 500 (or, you know, 150) individually designed and assembled record sleeves for your visceral enjoyment. Each one is imbued with the powers of those who made it.

[In which we realize that God may, in fact, be a circle pit.]

Let’s not kid ourselves here, there are questions about my commitment to this blog. It seems to many that if R. Kelly stopped releasing songs and artists I respected stopped dying, this blog wouldn’t be updated at all. Truth.

Chaperone will also be partaking in a Milwaukee Avenue Arts Fest After Party [or, as the kids call it, an MAAFAP (and then they all laugh, cause *fap* is internet slang for masturbating. Oh, 4Chan, you truly are the Lenny Bruce of the internet generation)]. Catch us at Cole’s on July 29th.

Chaperone will then be releasing a 7″ single entitled “Raised by Wolves” on 8/2. Pitchfork made mention of this. We’re right below Boston Spaceships’ “Let it Beard”. If you have any money left after purchasing that gem [or the Arcade Fire DVD, Okkervil River single, Moonface album, etc…], please consider purchasing our record as well. We promise that it will be, at the very least, useful for killing a (few) zombie(s).

1/5th of Chaperone watched fireworks from the beach rather than Fucked Up at Lincoln Hall. It was worth it. Next time, however, he’ll be inviting the members of Fucked Up to perform at the beach while fireworks are going off. Valentine’s Day is looking mighty fine this year.

That is, I think, all. If you have any questions/complaints/concerns/quality control issues, please don’t hesitate to have R. Kelly write a song about it, I’m sure I’ll respond quickly.